I had thought, originally, that L.A. Noire's pedestrians were unkillable, that their reflexive repulsion from the approaching fender of detective Cole Phelps was a game programmer's trick to reinforce their main character's attraction to only good deeds. That trick had been presented, I thought, at the expense of a devilish pleasure offered in Grand Theft Auto games. Those games allow a player to make roadways and sidewalks bowling alleys for automobiles (I expect that any right-minded person who would never use a car criminally in real-life would, without instruction, commit some amount of driving mayhem if given a controller and a copy of GTA.)

It turns out that the nimble are not the invincible. You can't easily run over pedestrians in L.A. Noire. You are discouraged, fined and reprimanded for doing so (read: you get a lower score in the game). But you can run them down. The physics of the game will reinforce Cole Phelps' moral disposition only so much. A determined player can over-ride them, like a person holding similarly-polarized magnets, finally pushing their ends together.